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I first saw this film as a child, and what I remember most vividly is the arrow through the neck. Mifune stumbles this way and that, an impossible number of arrows perforating him and the wall near him. Screaming, shambling away, he cannot escape the crescendo of doom. The sequence is almost like the shower murder in Psycho; it just builds and builds, quick cuts, whistling arrows, terrified reactions, until -Until the arrow in the neck. Then there's this beat, this elongated pause. Mifune isn't screaming any more. His face is frozen like the proverbial deer in the headlights. His fate is truly sealed. He's dead and he knows it, even if he has not actually stopped breathing, just yet.So climaxes Akira Kurosawa's telling of MacBeth. This is no spoiler - everybody knows he has to die. That we know his fate, even while he, himself denies it, is part of the tale's enduring power.Kurosawa and his team have created some inspired and genuinely chilling images and sounds: consider the voice of the witch in the woods, which is not quite human-sounding and rumbles with basso profundo undertones. Or the silvery clouds of fog hugging the moist, coal-black forest floor in the film's brilliant black-and-white cinematography. Or the palpably other-worldly quality of the apparitions that drive our hero nearly to madness. The visual compositions have an eerie precision, an expressionism not generally seen outside of the old German masters of the 20's.The acting is, indeed, highly stylized - even stilted, but so is Elizabethan English and, for that matter, the very notion of the soliloquy. We don't complain about either of those aspects of MacBeth when we see it in its original form, do we? Perhaps other reviewers here are correct in ascribing much of the film's style to the Noh theater tradition. I cannot say, since I have never seen it.But I have seen this film, and it occupies an esteemed place in my video collection.

The endless scenes of the frightened, whinnying horses, dashing through the impenetrable fog, reined and turned again and again by the lost, frightened and confused Mifune and Chiaki. The scene is unbearable, frustrating, and makes us understand what it is to "lose one's way" in the metaphorical sense as shown by the physical reality. This is what great film does: works on many levels, and offers us an intimate visual experience of the conceptual.

Noh provided inspiration for Mifune's visual presence: Kuroswa showed Mifune a Noh mask and asked him to become that.

(Between us-you always thought that Toshiro Mifune looked like a Japanese woodcut, anyway, didn't you? Something so deeply icon-like in that face! Of course Mifune was born to become THE samurai of film...he was already a part of the Japanese Collective Unconscious!)

Lady Macbeth's performance and makeup was also inspired by Noh. The blend of physical reality (the legendary Kurosawan attention to the smallest details of set and ambience) with the presentational aspects of traditional Japanese dramaturgy creates a rich and startling tapestry from Shakespeare's familiar story.

That this Macbeth is not language, but rather, image-driven shows us Kurosawa's great faith in the value of cinema as a form of deep human communication. He's convinced me, and I humbly submit my thanks.

This was an excellent adaptation of Shakespeare's "Macbeth". It was filmed beautifully and the acting was wonderful. It is not in english but there are subtitles. The only thing that kept it from five stars is that it's a little slow at times, but I actually think that was an artistic choice.

Throne of Blood is a study of a warlord (played by Toshiro Mifune) led by fate in form of a prophesy, straight to his doom. Is it the prophesy or the characters lack of trust in each other that leads them to their doom? The film has a supernatural element: a spirit who, early in the movie, utters a prophesy. This is not a realistic movie depicting 16th century Japan, but rather a dark fairy tale. The acting and the stage sets are terrific, and the film can easily be watched again.This DVD is up to Criterions usual standards. The picture is awesome (I watched it on a projector) with sharp details of armor pieces and foggy landscapes rendered beautiful. Especially for a movie 47 years old. Also there are two different subtitles, the new one is considered more difficult. I watched it with the new one and while some sentences seemed a little strange, there are no difficulties understanding what is going on.

It's easy fun watching this as as a semi-silent movie, since it's story is told very strongly just through it's images alone & listening to the audio commentary of interesting background detail related to the film by a Kurosawa enthusiast.

Despite the heavy cinema & literary royalty of Kurosawa and Macbeth baggage combined, one can still ignore all that and just watch this as an oddball atmospheric & dark fantasy Samurai tale of fate from the 50s with iconic looking scenes & set pieces.

A brilliant re-imagining of Shakespeare's "Macbeth" in feudal Japan, Kurosawa's gripping 1957 tragedy is a less frenetic, more haunting outing than previous films like "Seven Samurai." Yet it's still visually potent, containing unforgettable images of austere beauty within a persistently tense and eerie atmosphere. Yamada's character, modeled on Lady Macbeth, is sensationally chilling, while the outsize Mifune's breath-catching demise in a hail of piercing arrows is something every film lover should see more than once. For a provocative East-meets-West experience, mount "Throne of Blood."